“THE DAY WHEN HE WAS TAKEN UP…”—A MEDITATION FROM ACTS 2:1–9

Abstract

ASCENSION DAY 1997, MORGES, SWITZERLAND The Day The on which Jesus ascended is a tucked neatly in between commissioning Jesus presented his disciples and baptizing with Holy Spirit's power that he promised would accompany them on way. In details of Luke's account, it is carefully marked as a that came giving instructions through Holy Spirit to apostles whom he had chosen. It followed days when he had been appearing to speaking to them, staying with them. On other side of this there would be waiting. What is promised is not yet here. A strict order compels them not to leave Jerusalem. At Holy Spirit's fiery coming, he told them, you will be baptized, you will receive power, you will be my witnesses. In traditions of church's worshipping life, resurrection and Pentecost have played large. The relation of both to mission of God into which church is implicated has been crucial for church's self-understanding. But this day in between, of ascension, has been treated more as a passing comment, an almost irrelevant footnote. Perhaps it is now, in light of swirling dynamics in our contemporary world of globalization and fragmentation, dominance and liberation, healing and violence, that we can see in Ascension Day a paradigm for church's presence and missional identity. Perhaps we can recognize in the when Jesus was taken up (as also ten days following) a liminal moment very much like our own, and one which therefore orients us to our vocation. Luke makes it apparent that of ascension was poised - suspended, as it were - between heaven and earth, between beginning and end. This was not culmination - too much was yet awaiting fulfillment of God's intentions. Nor was it beginning - so thoroughly had Jesus' incarnation and suffering and death and resurrection begun triumph of God's reign. Ascension Day stood wonderfully between, as we ourselves stand continuously between beginnings and endings of God's designs. We stand after garden of Genesis where something went dreadfully wrong. We stand after flowering of nations and diversity of peoples (Gen. 10) and powerful human instinct to construct a resolution, to fix earth and achieve by effort knowledge and grandeur of God (Gen. 11). We stand after modern project of mastery by autonomous rationality and rational choice market forces in a technologized world. We inherit it all. We stand also before coming world of God's reign, captured so vividly by vision in revelation to John of a sparkling city, with a garden in midst of it and tree of life rooted on banks of river that runs through it. We live with memories of dreams Jesus painted in those forty days before he was taken up, dreams that echoed visions of prophets, fueling a hope grounded in reality of Jesus' resurrection. And ten more days of waiting were like our own, imagining what yet comes in fulfillment of words of Amos and Isaiah: Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream (5:24). They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for earth will be full of knowledge of Lord as waters cover sea (11:9). We know ourselves to be implicated in liminality of of ascension, even now in our own time. We can feel it in this world of globalization and fragmentation. The big news of this week has been falling from power of President Mobutu of Zaire. But many more clues spill from pages of this week's newspapers and magazines. Nike is in pursuit of dominance in world's sportswear market. Swissair defends (in its own in-flight magazine) why they hired non-Swiss to be top executives charged with success of company, and why they declared some flights non-smoking - in answer to challenge by one reader who said smoking infringed on personal freedoms and rights. …